Jack
by LayD
Summary: Jack's reflections on his life...


My first fanfic ever! So take it easy on this virgin lol!

**I own nothing. ** If I did, I wouldn't let AJ walk and reduce Paget's role...

Anyways it's from Jack's POV, throughout his life...I'm writing it as though he's reflecting, think of it like he's finished at Yale getting ready for the FBI.

Will be Hotch/Prentiss..don't know how yet.

I was 4 years old the night my mom gave up her life to save mine.

18 years later, I don't really have any memory of that night, which in a way is the only positive when it was all said and done. All I remember that I was "working a case" like my dad.

The morning of her funeral I remember him standing in front of the mirror fixing his shirt and tie, and then he turned his attention to me as the rain danced on the windows. The actual funeral itself I can't remember much either, I remember my Uncles Derek, Dave and Kevin carrying her casket with Uncle Spencer walking beside them, something was wrong with his leg at the time. I followed close behind with my dad, Emily, Aunty JJ and Pen. I remember standing with Aunt Jessica as my dad was giving her eulogy. I remember him picking me up and both of us placing white our white roses on top of her coffin. Then I remember and him telling me to blow a kiss.

My dad took some time off work after that. We would stay up late, eat ice cream, have pancakes for dinner and watch home movies of me and mom. He'd let me sleep in his bed and wear pajamas all day. I remember asking him once when she would be "coming home", when your 4 and you think your dad is an invincible superhero it was hard to see him just standing there, looking at me, no words coming out. I remember him barely whispering "I miss her too", as he picked me up and carried me to bed.

When he went back to work I was so excited, I remember telling Aunt Jessica over the phone that daddy was going to be catching the" bad guys" again. As much as he probably wanted to keep the same routine for me, it was impossible. Things were different now. I went from public school to a private school not to far from my Aunt Jessica lived, so it was be easier for her to pick me up and drop me off if my dad couldn't. One thing that did change for the better was that he around more often. Usually when he was at working, I wouldn't get to see him, of course he'd call every chance he got but. But now it was like everything changed, he had changed.

I would stay with Aunt Jessica most of the time while he was away, but now he tried to make to every T-Ball game on Saturday mornings, when he didn't have cases, instead of staying late to finish paperwork he would come home early to cook me dinner, help with homework, play video games and tuck me in. We'd go to the park with Aunty JJ and Henry, baseball games with Uncles Derek and Dave, the museum with Uncle Spencer, to the arcade with Pen and Kevin, or to dinner and a movie with Emily. It was odd at first because I didn't really know too much about Emily before my mom died but I was starting to see why my dads liked having her around. She smart, possibly smarter than my dad. I told her that once and she burst out in laughter, while he just smirked. She was hilarious, always having a funny joke to tell me or she would laugh at some joke I told her, although I probably messed it up 5 times before I got it right. She always had great stories to tell from all the places she went to as a kid. I soon realized I could ask her anything and know she would try to answer it honestly. She would play video games with me. She would come over often, help us cook or clean, read me stories in the funny voices that my dad could never bring himself to do. She always had a stash of chocolate in the bottom draw of her desk that she would share whenever Aunt Jessica was drop me off at the BAU so dad wouldn't have to drive out to where she lived. She made me laugh and that in turn would make my dad laugh, even though he'd try to hide it.

I remember one year while I was in school, we were making Mother's Day cards. All my friends were busy with theirs. I just sat there, not touching the glue, construction paper or markers. It was going to be Mothers' Day soon, I was going to have to make a stupid card and didn't have a mom to give it to. So, I just sat there. I sat at my desk, the all of a sudden I stood up, pushed everything off forcefully, filliping over the desk and chair, and started to cry. My teacher I guess knew what had happened and was concerned so she tried to call my dad. Unfortunately he was in a meeting at that time and they couldn't reach him. It was then I screamed, telling her to "ASK FOR EMILY"! Needless to say, she did, and within 30 minutes I could hear the siren of her SUV and then Emily came bursting into the school office with a worried look on her face. After my teacher told her what happened, she sat down beside me, didn't say and word, pulled me into her lap, rubbed circles on my back and was just whispering sweet nothings in my ear. I remember throwing my hands around her, burying my face by her neck as the tears poured out. Looking back at that incident, years later, I was not only crying because I didn't have a mom to give my card to, but I was crying for my dad, who was having to be both mom and dad and for Aunt Jessica who was having to help raise her sister's child.

Since Aunt Jessica had an appointment that day, Emily took me back with her to the BAU___. Saying "hi" to everyone as I passed by their desk, Emily told them what happened at school and I could see they had sad looks on their faces. We went to my dad's office. We sat at his desk, sharing a chocolate bar while waiting for_ him to get out of his meeting with Strauss ___or "Dragon Lady" as Emily called her. He came into the office, head down, reading some file. "Hi daddy" was all I remember saying, he immediately stopped, looked up and had an extremely confused look on his face. "Check your voicemail" was all Emily told him. As he did, I could see his heart sink. He literally grabbed me out of Emily's arms and just held on tight, like his life depended on it. Emily was about to leave and I remember I told him 10 times to put me down. He did, I ran to my school bag and pulled out the card I had made, or attempted to make and gave it to Emily. I remember her just standing there not knowing what to do, she bent down gave me a kiss on the forehead, smiled and said "thank you baby, but I think we should give this to your dad, just to thank him for doing all he tries to do for you". So I turned, gave him the card and hugged him as tight as he was hugging me before. I remember hearing him giving Emily a small, barely audible "thank you" as she turned on her heel and left his office. _

___As the years pasted, things changed, but as things changed, the more they stayed the same. Dad was still trying to be superman, blanching work and time with me. I guess things got easier the older I got. I wish I could say his cases got easier too. I understood he couldn't be in 2 places at once, but he would still try. Aunt Jessica was still helping us out whenever she could. _We'd still go to the park with Aunty JJ and Henry, but this time around there was a new addition Claire. Claire was JJ's and Will's daughter. We got Redskin season tickets and somehow spilt those 3 ways with Dave, who eventually found wife #4 and Derek, along his new lady friend Tamara. We still did the museum with Spencer and now I got him to try skateboarding but he always tried to approach it like a math equation which sucked the fun out of it. I still went to the arcade, but now only Kev and I would go because Pen was going to be a mom herself and could be on her feat for to long. Emily was always Emily, still always there at the drop of dime whenever I needed her. She was with some guy named James for a while. He was a lawyer from Boston. I think things were serious for a while; they were on-again-off-again for nearly 3 years. He ended up getting a job offer in LA and he wanted her to move with him. Long story short, she didn't go. I used to wonder why she never got married and started her own family. That very thought used to scare me. I knew deep down I didn't really want her to move on. I didn't want her to go on her "dates", I wanted her to come over and help us coo , or play video games or even just to sit and talk with my dad like they did for hours. I was always relived when she would show up after a bad date, they would sit in the living and watch old black and white movies that were on at 12am, fall asleep, wake up, make breakfast, take me to school and then head to work together.

The morning of my 16th birthday I could barley contain my excitement. I was going for my drivers licenses and was counting down minutes until the DMV was open. Dad took the morning off to take me. Just before I went in I got 5 texts wishing me good luck and one in particular saying "Don't sweat it, I know people in the DMV – E". Needless to say, I did pass and Emily never failed to surprise me. I begged my dad to let me skip school that day and then somehow managed to get him to take the rest of the day off himself but not before he had to pick up files. When we got to the BAU it was hugs and kisses all around, with some birthday punches thrown in from Uncle Derek. I wiped out my temporary license to show everyone. Emily was the last one to get a chance to see it. I remember her just sitting there, staring at it like she's seen a ghost. She looked at the picture, then looked at me again, smiled and said "I never realized how much you are your fathers' son until now".

Considering everything that happened, I always considered myself to be a good kid growing up. Listened to my father, respected the people that were the closest thing to family that I had. But, it was my junior year in high school that I started to rebel. Maybe it just comes along with the age, I don't know. One night while my dad was always on a case, not very far actually, he was only in Virginia, I went out with a bunch of people from school, I stole one of his credit cards he kept in the house in case of an emergency and his keys, took a joy ride in his FBI issued SUV, got wasted and hooked up with a girl I didn't know. What I didn't know at the time was that his SUV had some sort of GPS tracker installed, probably by Pen, and the moment I went out of a specific area he was notified. I guess the moment it went off he left the case and drove someone else's car back. He eventually found me in my school parking lot, very drunk. He didn't say anything to be during the ride home. The moment the door closed was another story. He never yelled at me like he did that night. While he was yelling at me, there was nothing but drunken rage in me.

That night, I said everything that I never imagined saying to the man that gave up so much for me, that raised me. I told him it was his fault this was all happening, his fault that our lives sucked, his fault he was alone and could never know what love is, his fault that he was cold and heartless, his fault that my mother was dead because he always put his career over his family, his fault that one of his agents shot and killed an innocent man, his fault Spencer had to turn to drugs once, his fault Derek didn't feel like he could trust him, his fault Emily almost had the life beaten out of her on some stupid case and he didn't do anything to help her. That was when I lost it. I charged at him with a bottle I grabbed from the table. He quickly grabbed me and held me tight to his chest as I cried. We were nearly the same height now, but I remember felling so small and weak in his arms. When things started to calm down he asked me how I knew all that I knew. I looked at him and said "I am my father's son". I apologized to him the next morning. He said it was alright and sadly a lot of the things I said were true. I never told him how I knew these things though. I never told him I would listen to conversations he would have over the phone or that I would listen to my grandparents talk at night when I visited and when they thought I was asleep, or from sneaking glances at the case files that he would try to hide in a box at the top in his closet.

The following days after my melt down was still a bit tense, it would take a while for things to get back to the way there were. But now his team was back at the BAU. They closed the case they were working on, and that meant Emily was back. She was the one thing that we had in common, the one neutral figure, the one common denominator that could see things from both sides. I figured my dad already told her a bit of what had happened, or she had managed to get it out of him, without him realizing, she had a way of doing that. I went to her apartment one night after football practice; she looked at me and just sighed. We ordered Chinese and talked about what had happened. That was the night Emily told me what she was like as a kid. She told me she spent all her time rebelling against her parents and the lifestyle the wanted to have. She told me she drank heavily, hung around the wrong crowd, slept around with guys just to fit in and got into drugs. I was shocked when she told me this. Here I was thinking that she a prim and proper Ambassadors' daughter. When in reality she was far from it, but here she was willing to share that part of her past with me. After spending my entire life with profilers I knew why she was telling me this though. That no matter what happens your parents are always your parents, they try to give you their best, in hope that one day, you'll be able to realize and appreciate it, that no matter how strained your relationship can be with them, you can always go home. She and her mother are slowing fixing their strained relationship. I knew Emily Prentiss was a remarkable woman from the moment I met her, that night she just solidified it. She unknowingly became the closet thing I had to a mother figure from the moment I lost mine. She didn't run from it, she embraced it even if she did not know what was happening. She along with the rest of the team become my father's and in turn my touchstone. It was that night I realized that I would do absolutely anything for her, that I would run through a wall if she asked me to.

I remember we spent the rest of the night talking about nothing, but any and everything. I learned that my night that one of my dad's first assignments at the FBI was working security background for her mother's staff. She could read me like a book, all she was "no, I didn't get a chance to met him then, I was getting ready to leave for Yale" with a smirk on her face. It was that night I told her about wanting to join the FBI. I asked Emily what my mom would think about this decision if she was alive. She was honest with me like she always was. Basically saying that while she doesn't think my mom would have wanted me to join the FBI and follow in my dad's footsteps, everything she did, including giving her up her life was done to make sure I would be happy and that if joining the FBI, made me happy, then she would support it, maybe she wouldn't be too keen on it but nevertheless she would support me.

A year after that mess, things were back to being how they where before. I was in my senior year, enjoying and soaking up every minute of it. It was that year that I truly knew that I wanted to follow in my dad's footstep and become a profiler. I took as much science, sociology and psychology courses as I could. I also decided I wanted to go to Yale if I was fortunate enough to get it. This made Emily smile as Uncle Derek and Uncle Spencer handed her $20 each, when I told them that day in the bullpen. The moment my acceptance letter came I went to the office. I couldn't bring myself to open it by myself. Everyone gathered in my dad's office. Emily whispered in my ear just before I opened it, "don't sweat it, I know people at Yale". We both laughed as everyone else just wondered what she said. I open the letter and screamed like a 12 year old catholic school girl. I got in! Everyone just laughed and hugs, kisses and congratulations made their way to me. Uncle Dave even pulled out a new $100 bill and pasted it my way.


End file.
